A Twenty20 International (T20I) is a form of cricket, played between two of the top member nation of the International Cricket Council (ICC), in which each team faces 20 overs. The game is played under the rules of Twenty20 cricket. The shortened format was initially introduced to bolster crowds for the domestic game, and was not intended to be played internationally, but the first Twenty20 International took place on 17 February 2005 when Australia defeated New Zealand, and the first tournament was played two years later, with the introduction of the ICC World Twenty20. There remain limits on how many Twenty20 Internationals a team can play each year, in order to protect Test cricket and One Day Internationals, and as of 2015, there were sixteen nations with Twenty20 International status.

The shorter format of the game makes reaching the traditional milestones of scoring a century or taking five wickets in an innings more difficult, and few players have achieved these. The highest individual score in a Twenty20 International was made by Aaron Finch, who reached 156 runs for Australia against England in 2013, while Ajantha Mendis is the only bowler to have taken six wickets in an innings: fewer than twenty players have taken five wickets in an innings.

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Cricket itself was probably first played in England in the Late Middle Ages, but it didn't rise to prominence until the eighteenth century. A set of laws were drawn up in 1744, and the game achieved a level of relative standardisation by the late nineteenth century.[1]One-day cricket was trialled in 1962, and the first domestic tournament played the following year,[2] and in 1971, England and Australia contested the first One Day International. The match consisted of one innings for each side, with 40 eight-ballovers.[3]

In the 1990s, a number of countries were exploring the possibility of a shorter game still: in New Zealand, Martin Crowe developed Cricket Max, in which each team bats for 10 eight-ball overs,[4] while in Australia they considered an eight-a-side contest they dubbed "Super 8s". At the same time, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) conducted consumer research, and proposed the idea of a 20 overs-per-side contest, which would last for about three hours.[5] The first match was played in 2003 between Hampshire and Sussex.[6]

The first Twenty20 International match between two men's sides was played on 17 February 2005, involving Australia and New Zealand. Wisden Cricketers' Almanack reported that "neither side took the game especially seriously",[7] and it was noted by ESPNcricinfo that but for a large score for Ricky Ponting, "the concept would have shuddered".[8] Two further matches were played that year; England beat Australia in June, and South Africa were defeated by New Zealand in October.[9] Early the following year, a contest between New Zealand and the West Indies finished as the first tied match, and a tiebreak was played for the first time in men's international cricket: the two sides took part in a bowl-out to determine a winner; New Zealand won 3–0.[10]

The game had initially been developed to boost the interest in domestic cricket, and to aid this the international teams were only allowed to host three T20Is each year. The cricket manager for the ICC, David Richardson, also commented that "Part of the success of Twenty20 cricket is making sure it can coexist with Test cricket and one-dayers."[11] Despite this, the first international tournament was held in 2007 in South Africa; the 2007 ICC World Twenty20.[11] That tournament was won by India, who defeated their close rivals Pakistan in the final. Writing for The Guardian, Dileep Premachandran suggested that the competition's success meant that "the format is here to stay".[12] The next tournament was scheduled for 2009, and it was decided that they would take place biannually (more frequently than the 50 over Cricket World Cup, which occurs once every four years).[13] In the opening match of the 2007 World Twenty20, Chris Gayle scored the first century in a T20I, the achievement being reached in the twentieth match of the format.[14]

Since 2005, the ICC has granted temporary ODI and T20I status to six other teams (known as Associate/Affiliate members). Teams earn this temporary status for a period of four years based on their performance in the quadrennial ICC World Cricket League – or, more specifically, based on the top six finishing positions at the ICC World Cup Qualifier, which is the final event of the World Cricket League. On the 28th of June 2014, the ICC granted T20I status to Nepal and Netherlands, both of whom qualified for and took part in the 2014 ICC World Twenty20, but had both failed to gain/retain ODI status.[15] The following eight teams currently have this status (the dates listed in brackets are of their first T20I match after gaining temporary ODI or T20I status):

Subsequently, three other Associate Nations have held temporary ODI and T20I status as a result of World Cricket League performances, before being relegated after underperforming at the World Cup Qualifier:

The highest team total in a T20I was made by Sri Lanka in 2007. Facing Kenya, they scored 260 runs for the loss of six wickets (260/6), also granting them the largest winning margin.[21][22] The lowest total also came in a match involving Sri Lanka: in 2014, the Netherlands were bowled out for just 39 runs against them.[23] The highest successful chase was made in early 2015, when the West Indies scored 236 runs to overhaul South Africa's target and win the match.[24]

Brendon McCullum has accrued the most runs in the format, and is the only batsman to have scored more than 2,000 runs.[25] He is one of less than twenty players to have scored a century in T20Is, and as of February 2015, the only one to have done so twice. The highest total in a T20I though, was scored by Aaron Finch, who totalled 156 runs in a match against England in 2013.[26] Three Pakistani bowlers lead the records for the most wickets; each having taken over 80 in T20Is: Saeed Ajmal, Umar Gul and Shahid Afridi.[27] Similarly, Sri Lanka's Ajantha Mendis has recorded the best two set of bowling figures in T20Is, and is the only bowler to have taken six wickets in a match, doing so against both Zimbabwe in 2012, and Australia in 2011.[28]